Sunday, May 22, 2011

Like Y2K All Over Again...

Wow - a week has gone by since my last post! Sorry I disappeared. Last week was somewhat insane.

Last Tuesday: Well, I went grocery shopping at Yesh with Sara & Renat. Then I dropped them off at their caravan and picked up my cd-case. The rest of the day was boring aside from battling with a bazillion flies, the sky being yellow and gross looking from some weird weather phenomenon and the swarms of ants in my living room. We have determined that the ants are actually living inside the big sliding door-frame. Pretty gross if you ask me. We cinnamon-ed the floor (inside and outside) so now the ants are climbing up the door instead - pain in the butt bugs, but gotta hand it to them, pretty darn smart...

Last Wednesday: 2 dozen phone calls, flopped unfloppable challahs (because I am that talented), chicken soup for breakfast (since I hadn't been tolerating anything else for the last few days.) We made our first batch of lemonade with nana (spearmint) picked from our garden. I baked 2 batches of sugar cookie bars and 1 batch of cherry jam crumble bars for the bbq Thursday night. Abe slept over (and brought me all of my present from Merryca - cupcake liners, candy thermometers, spices and extracts.) Little Brother came over to visit and Sara came over after class too. I made pretzel dogs, seasoned potato wedges and sliced veggies for dinner.

On Thursday I woke up ridiculously early. By 8:45 I was on the road to Petach Tikva to visit The Freddies. I got to their house with no problems (aside from the street being closed) and Freddie and I walked over to the 'Ma'am Building' when I officially opened a 'tik' (file) with ma'am and with mas hachnasa. I'm officially in business now and it is super exciting! During our stroll back to Freddie's house I noticed a photo-store. We ducked in and I managed to buy 2 photo-albums for only 20 shekel a piece for the cookbooks! Back at her house Freddie gathered her stuff then I drove us to the mall where we did some wandering, window shopping and bought some really cute kitchen stuff (I got 3 little salad bowls, a cute baking dish with a lid, and the most adorable 1 liter pitcher ever.) Our next stop was at the gas station so I could fill up my thirsty tank and our last errand was the famed 'batzal yarok' - a fruit and vegetable store on the corner near The Freddies' house. I picked up everything from peppers to nectarines and strawberries at amazing prices. Then I dropped Freddie of at her house and made my way back out to the middle-of-nowhere. I had a few minutes to sit and relax before heading out to take Sara to the dentist to get a wisdom tooth extracted. After the surgery we stopped in town to pick up some antibiotics for her and while we were there I picked up the salatim for Shabbos. I dropped her off at her caravan before going home to pick up Z, pack the desserts into the car and then heading out to the A4I Anglo BBQ in Rova Bet. We were there until almost 11pm and decided to leave when I realized how exhausted I was.

Friday morning I cooked for Shabbos like a crazy busy person. Then I took Sara out to the dentist - because she wanted to 'check it out' and make sure that everything looked good. After a 1-minute look-see we were out of there. I took a chance and drove over to the keilim mikvah to see if I could 'dunk' my new kitchen goodies. The water was pretty gross but I was determined to use the new stuff for Shabbos. Back at Home Z informed me that he wanted to 'try something new' and take in early Shabbos by davening in Rova Bet. That made candle-lighting at 5:40 instead of 7ish. Sara arrive at 5 and at 5:30pm I drove him down to the shul in Rova Bet then hurried Home and lit candles. Amazingly enough it worked out very well. He walked Home via the 'dirt security path' and the walk only took 35 minutes. Unbelievably enough he was Home by 7:15 - which meant that we were able to eat dinner about 2 hours earlier than if we had taken in Shabbos at the 'regular' time.

Shabbos lunch we were joined by Sara's friend Zvi and he stuck around all day so that they could study together for their upcoming exams. It was a lot of fun. We played Bananagrams, Phase 10 and even a game of Rummikub. Moza"sh Sara headed back down to her caravan. Z and I watched the season finale of Big Bang Theory and then went to sleep. I mean, it was a little after 11. We didn't go to any bonfires - we'd had quite enough of smoky icky-ness on Thursday night.

This morning has been relatively quiet so far - aside from the construction. I'm busy putting the finishing touches on the 10x15 size recipe cards. I really want to send them off to print. I am still missing a number of photos - but I'll just have to add them in as I make the foods. I really don't have patience to keep 'owing' copies of the book to people. I have also added in a whole bunch of 'new' recipes. The albums that I bought on Thursday hold 200 photos each and I currently each book is 186 photos long. (Yeah, there are about 200 recipes included now.) I'm trying to decide whether to add in some random miscellaneous recipes for drinks (not-quite-snapple and lemonade) and for things like 'matzah balls'. I'm also too lazy to actually write out a recipe for 'chunky tomato sauce' - how evil is that?

Tomorrow I'm going to go to Bituach Leumi to take care of the '2nd to last' part of opening my business - the last part is finding myself an official accountant to file my papers for me at the end of the year. I have even already spoken with a client (who has been waiting for over a year for me to 'get my act together') and they are very excited that we can now move ahead with the project that they have had on hold for me since I moved out here to the middle-of-nowhere.

I'm looking forward to this week. It should be delightfully tranquil and easygoing. At least that's what I'm hoping - considering last week was anything but that.